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Pest Pros Granted Trademark

PLAINFIELD, Wis.-Pest Pros Inc. has been granted a trademark for its Storage Potato Disease Risk Indexing system, to be known as STORECAST.

The system is the first of its kind as a potato storage disease and inventory management tool. Based on molecular disease diagnostic techniques known as PCR (polymerase chain reaction), STORECAST measures the storage disease risk for soft rot, leak and pink rot. Late blight, dry rot, silver scurf, early blight and black dot can also be included in the pathogen screen.

Two seasons of data from 2008 and 2009 on 64 fields comparing storage rot forecasts to the final storage rot outcome show a 76 percent accuracy rate for close or full agreement on processed potato varieties. Over the two seasons, only a 3 percent rate of seeing substantially more rot than expected occurred.

Pest Pros Inc. is currently pursuing licensing agreements with others to provide the system in other areas. Pest Pros Inc. has been in the potato crop consulting and plant disease diagnostic business since 1984.

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